Rand Paul: Obama 'Misunderstands' Separation of Powers

On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said President Barack Obama “fundamentally misunderstands the Constitutional separation of powers” and emphasized that the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s programs need to be questioned.

In response to an internal audit that found the NSA’s surveillance programs violated privacy rules, Paul said that “checks and balances are supposed to come from independent branches of government.”

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He noted the founders wanted to “separate police power from judicial power” and linked the NSA to a type of police.

Paul said the NSA spying revelations were like the IRS and Benghazi scandals, where internal reviews did not lead to any firings. He said without Edward Snowden’s leaks, the country would not have known about the internal audits and the fact that the NSA was collecting “billions of pieces of data on American cell phones every day.”

Paul said the whole program needs to be reviewed, but it cannot be through an internal audit because the Obama administration has shown it cannot police itself.